Ludovician deck
| Ludovician deck | |
|---|---|
| Designer | Quietly Confident |
| Date | 25/07/2007 |
| Players | 3+ |
| This deck has not been categorised. | |
| To play Dvorak: Draw five cards each and leave the rest as a draw pile. On your turn, draw a card from the draw pile and play one Thing and/or one Action. (See the full rules.) | |
 Print this deck | |
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It's a work in progress. I'd appreciate some good ideas, for those who pop by this, for reducing the ruleset without reducing it's emphasis on backstabbery and strategic thinking. This is as far as I've gotten this first night, and I'll be back soon to put some more work into the set. I've got plenty more ideas, but typing them in is something I'm going to have to do in a bit later, once I get the balance straight in my head.
This is a hybrid Nomic deck based on the book "The Raw Shark Texts" where you attempt to kill off your friends by making them fodder for the Ludovician Memory Shark. It contains some things that are elements from the book but should not be considered spoilers. You don't need to have read the book before playing the game, and if it helps, rename the Ludovician to a Snark or a Beast or something to make it easier to conceptualize.
While the game may seem rules-heavy, the majority of the rules are designed to govern the behavior of the Ludovician itself. For the safest possible gaming, please put one dictaphone at each corner of the playing surface.
Special Rules
The Special Rules are the only rules which cannot be changed in Nomic form.
Winning the Game
Winning the game requires you to either accumulate all five Fragments, or to eliminate every other player.
If a player's hand ever becomes empty or contains nothing but Dead Spaces, they are eliminated from the game.
The Ludovician
The Ludovician is a Memory Shark, and feeds upon Human memories. It is always played at the beginning of the game, but begins Face Down and is considered inert. It becomes active and Face Up immedietely after the first Action is played. The Ludovician's turn is always at the end of the round, before the discard phase. It must always attempt to make at least one action per round. If no player forces the Ludovician to act, it will naturally move on it's own at the end of turn order, before the discard phase. This act is an attack.
An attack will tear away a small bit of you, leaving you with a Dead Space where the attack leaves a scar on your mind. The Dead Space is a card, and can be played, but only if you choose to give up all your Memories and Concepts. You must defend yourself from the Ludovician by avoiding it's predation while also attempting to coax it into attacking your opponents. There are several cards that directly effect the Ludovician's behavior, and Concepts can be used to change the rules of the game in such a manner that it turns on your foes.
The attack always has the same effect on a player it acts on, regardless of Nomic rules. It forces the player to discard two cards, and gives them a 'Dead Space' card. Additionally, the Ludovician cannot be destroyed or discarded for any reason.
However, as a Shark, it has a fairly predictable feeding pattern that governs the attack behavior. If left to it's own devices, it will seek out and attack players on its own, and so there is provided a simple list to run down and determine who is attacked.
Feeding Habits of a Conceptual Shark
If left to act on it's own, the Ludovician will attack a player based on it's own priorities. If the values of a higher priority are equal between two players, the Ludovician will discriminate between them according to the order as follows:
1: The highest Visibility rating,
2: The most Actions in that turn,
3: The least number of Dead Spaces,
4: The most recently attacked.
5: If the Ludovician has not yet attacked a player, or all Visibilities are no more than zero and no actions have been taken, the Ludovician will pass that round and go Face Down.
Visibility
As mentioned earlier, cards have numbers on them showing their total 'Visibility' rating, or the degree to which playing such a card attracts the attention of the Shark. The higher the total number of visibility for that turn the more attractive a target you become. Actions create visibilities that only last a single turn, but Things such as Memories create a constant effect. Some cards, such as Conceptual Fish, have no visibility penalty.
However, some Things allow you to disguise yourself. Several of these things exist in the Deck already, such as Dictaphone Loops, or Logic Traps. These can allow you to act covertly, without alerting the Ludovician, or to build up a defensive barricade capable of keeping the shark at bay indefinately. This would be tantamount to winning the game, if it were not for the other players interfering.
Conceptual Objects
Key to the game, even more key than the Ludovician itself, is the idea of conceptual reality. Concepts can be given concrete reality, and the Ludovician is only a conceptual shark. The real power and danger in the game is using conceptual objects or actions to alter the shared reality, and this is done in Nomic and Creative Dvorak form using the Concept deck.
The Concept deck is a stack of blank cards used for the creation of Concepts. To keep Conceptual reality seperate from actual reality, it is wise to add 'Conceptual' as a prefix, allowing you to discern between Things and Conceptual Things. Concepts can be actions, rules, things, or even other Conceptual Fish. So long as they do not interfere with the Special Rules, this deck is free to be used in Nomic and Creative Dvorak fashion.
However, all Conceptual Objects have a visibility of one, and remain visible as long as they are in play, and any card that would normally be played on nobody (such as a new game rule) must be played on themselves.
Card List
First of all, stay calm.
...is a primitive conceptual fish. It lives inside humans and feeds on their ability to think quickly; parasite of a kind that ensures its host is quiet and well-behaved. Causes nausea.
...dangerous in large schools, deconstructive pihrana attack human ideas, and chip away at meanings and definitions. A once obvious truth can become confused, stripped of all relevence or objectivity.
...are little thought fishes that like to pick at commas and more old-fashioned letters. Fry shoals are so small they can easily slip through most defensive barriers. Aren’t big fans of the note Middle C.
...small conceptual sharks known as 'Shoal Queens,' they are powerful of conceptual predators, and prey nearly exclusively on other conceptual fish.
...formerly Psychogenic Amnesia, is a pervasive loss of significant personal information. This disorder is characterized by a blocking out of critical personal information. Dissociative amnesia does not result from other medical trauma, such as a blow to the head....
...is a rare disorder. An individual with dissociative fugue suddenly and unexpectedly takes physical leave of his surroundings and sets off on a journey of some kind. These journeys can last hours, or even several days or months...
Un-Space is the greatest refuge from conceptual life. It is the empty abandoned area of the world. The corridors behind the shops in malls, storeroomes, dark tunnels, passageways, fire escapes, stairwells, elevators, old boarded up houses.
The most effective conceptual camouflage is the non-divergent conceptual loop, played back through four dicataphones.
Fiction or Non-Fiction work equally as well. Be sure not to open any live texts outside of a Circular Pile of Books.
Letters from people you don't know, ideally addressed to other people you don't know, and left unopened. A light masking defense, inadequate at close range.
Mimicing another person's thoughts, responses, jokes and prejudices allows you to hide yourself in the mind of another person. While only of temporary good, it is wise to have several alternate identities.
Literally a letter bomb, a set of old iron typeface wrapped around a pipebomb mixed with shredded newsprint can create a momentary disturbance capable of killing small conceptual fish or stunning the Ludovician.
"I wanted to say, 'No really,' and explain how Ian really wasn't a getting-to-know-you type of cat or even a casual-hello type of cat, more a sort of whirlwind made out of blades."
